Vino Business: The Cloudy World of French Wine

Already provoking debate and garnering significant attention in France and within the wine world, Vino Business is a surprising and eye-opening book about the dark side of French wine by acclaimed investigative journalist Isabelle Saporta.

Wine: Everything You Need to Know About Wine from Beginner to Expert

Are you fascinated by the many kinds of wines you can choose from? Is the rich variety of wines overwhelming? Do you need help choosing the perfect wines - at the right prices? Wine: Everything You Need to Know About Wine from Beginner to Expert provides a brief history of wine, explains wine geography, and teaches you how to recognize a good wine. You'll learn about aroma and balance, what to look for on wine labels, and how to find the best prices!

The Juice: Vinous Veritas

For more than a decade, Jay McInerney’s vinous essays, now featured in The Wall Street Journal, have been praised by restaurateurs (“Filled with small courses and surprising and exotic flavors, educational and delicious at the same time” Mario Batali), by esteemed critics (“Brilliant, witty, comical, and often shamelessly candid and provocative” Robert M. Parker Jr.), and by the media (“His wine judgments are sound, his anecdotes witty, and his literary references impeccable” The New York Times).

The Road to Burgundy: The Unlikely Story of an American Making Wine and a New Life in France

Ray Walker had a secure career in finance until a wine-tasting vacation ignited a passion that he couldn't stifle. Ray neglected his work, spending hours poring over ancient French winemaking texts, learning the techniques and the language, and daydreaming about vineyards. After Ray experienced his first taste of wine from Burgundy, he could wait no longer. He quit his job and went to France to start a winery - with little money, a limited command of French, and virtually no winemaking experience.

A Vineyard in My Glass

Gerald Asher, who served as Gourmet's wine editor for 30 years, has drawn together this selection of his essays, published in Gourmet and elsewhere, for the collective insight they give into why a wine should always be an expression of a place and a time. Guiding the reader through 27 diverse wine regions in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and California, he shows how every wine worth drinking is a reflection of its terroir - in the broadest sense of that untranslatable word.

Extreme Wine: Searching the World for the Best, the Worst, the Outrageously Cheap, the Insanely Overpriced, and the Undiscovered

In Extreme Wine, wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth circles the globe searching for the best, worst, cheapest, most expensive, and most over-priced wines. Mike seeks out the most outrageous wine people and places and probes the biggest wine booms and busts. Along the way he applauds celebrity wines, tries to find wine at the movies, and discovers wines that are so scarce that they are almost invisible.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History houses, amid its illustrious artifacts, two bottles of wine: a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. These are the wines that won at the now-famous Paris Tasting in 1976, where a panel of top French wine experts compared some of France's most famous wines with a new generation of California wines. Little did they know the wine industry would be completely transformed as a result....

A Guide to Wine

Actor and wine expert Julian Curry has devised a unique audiobook guide to wine. The whole subject is introduced and explained  how wine is made, the different grapes, the different blends, vintages, wine-growing areas and types. In an entertaining and informal style, he also teaches how to taste wine, and how to choose and store it.

A Natural History of Wine

An excellent bottle of wine can be the spark that inspires a brainstorming session. Such was the case for Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, scientists who frequently collaborate on book and museum exhibition projects. When the conversation turned to wine one evening, it almost inevitably led the two - one a palaeoanthropologist, the other a molecular biologist - to begin exploring the many intersections between science and wine. This audiobook presents their fascinating, freewheeling answers to the question.

At the Chef's Table: Culinary Creativity in Elite Restaurants

Chefs at top restaurants face competing pressures to deliver complex and creative dishes, and navigate market forces to run a profitable business in an industry with exceptionally high costs and low profit margins. Creating a distinctive and original culinary style allows them to stand out in the market, but making the familiar food that many customers want ensures that they can stay in business.

Making Sense of Wine

Since its first publication in 1989, Matt Kramer's extraordinarily accessible guide to wine has become a classic. Where others talk jargon about centrifuges, steel tanks, and acidity levels, Kramer talks about wine itself. The result is an enriching experience that goes far beyond knowing how to read a label or impress a waiter.

This guide tells you about the wine-growing regions, especially: the Euganean Hills, Prosecco, Soave, Cistoza, Bardolino, Valpolicella, Bassano del Grappa - how to visit the vineyards, taste the wines, trying the best restaurants, and the best places to stay in each region. All of the details you need to know are here so your trip will be unforgettable.

50 Foods: The Essentials of Good Taste

With 50 Foods, noted authority Edward Behr has created the definitive guide to the foods every food lover must know. A culinary Baedeker, 50 Foods will delight and inform the connoisseur as well as the novice.

Like Behr's celebrated magazine, the Art of Eating, 50 Foods presents simple, practical information about buying, using, preparing, and enjoying. Behr focuses on aroma, appearance, flavor, and texture to determine what "the best" means for each food.

Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure

In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown - until now. This is the thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious, daring measures to save their cherished crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them.

My Life in France

This memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia Child embraced so wholeheartedly. Above all, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became.

The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty

Set in California's lush Napa Valley and spanning four generations of a talented and visionary family, The House of Mondavi is a tale of genius, sibling rivalry, and betrayal. From 1906, when Italian immigrant Cesare Mondavi passed through Ellis Island, to the Robert Mondavi Corporation's 21st-century battle over a billion-dollar fortune, award-winning journalist Julia Flynn Siler brings to life both the place and the people in this riveting family drama.

Thirsty Dragon: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best Wines

Thirsty Dragon lays bare the untold story of how an influx of Chinese money rescued France's most venerable wine region from economic collapse and how the result was a series of misunderstandings and crises that threatened the delicate infrastructure of Bordeaux insular wine trade.

Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists

Writing with wit and verve, Mike Veseth (a.k.a. the Wine Economist) tells the compelling story of the war between the market trends that are redrawing the world wine map and the terroirists who resist them. Wine and the wine business are at a critical crossroad today, transformed by three powerful forces. Veseth begins with the first force, globalization, which is shifting the center of the wine world as global wine markets provide enthusiasts with a rich but overwhelming array of choices.

Publisher's Summary

In The Food and Wine of France, influential food writer Edward Behr investigates French cuisine and what it means, in encounters from Champagne to Provence. He tells the stories of French artisans and chefs who continue to work at the highest level.

Many people in and out of France have noted for a long time the slow retreat of French cuisine, concerned that it is losing its important place in the country's culture and in the world culture of food. And yet, as Behr writes, good French food remains very, very delicious. No cuisine is better. The sensuousness is overt. French cooking is generous, both obvious and subtle, simple and complex, rustic and utterly refined. A lot of recent inventive food by comparison is wildly abstract and austere. In the tradition of great food writers, Behr seeks out the best of French food and wine. He shows not only that it is as relevant as ever, but he also challenges us to see that it might become the world's next cutting-edge cuisine.

The Food and Wine of France is a remarkable journey of discovery. It is also an investigation into why classical French food is so extraordinarily delicious - and why it will endure.

What the Critics Say

"[An] extended love letter to French food and wine.... Behr makes a strong case for the ongoing international relevance of French cuisine.... A solid education in France's diverse terroir and culinary methodology." (Publishers Weekly)

"Graham Halstead's resonant narration brings out the rich diversity of different regions and dishes in this comprehensive exploration of French cuisine.... Halstead conveys how deeply the French foods and wines he discusses are entrenched in each region's setting and history, making for a delectable and illuminating listening experience. " (AudioFile)